As the volume of data accessible via computer continues to increase, the need for automated tools for efficient retrieval of relevant information from that data also increases. Many people use the Internet to access a wide variety of information. Search engine queries are routinely employed to find relevant information on the many web pages that are indexed by a given search engine. Generally, search engines are remotely accessible programs that perform keyword searches for information. A search query allows a user to specify his or her information needs by entering keywords or search phrases that are believed to be included in the documents of interest.
Search engines often return links to many documents that are determined to be related to the user-specified search query. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. The presented information may consist of web pages, images, information and other types of files. Many search engines also provide a relevance ranking, which is a relative numerical estimate of the statistical likelihood that the identified material will be of interest relative to other identified documents. Relevance rankings are often based on the number of times a keyword or search phrase appears in a document, the placement of the keywords or search phrases in the document (for example, a keyword in the title is often deemed more relevant than one at the end of the page), and the size of the document.
While existing search engines provide valuable assistance to users in locating relevant information on the World Wide Web, they suffer from a number of limitations, which if overcome, could further improve the utility and efficiency of search engines. For example, the presentation of each item in the search results is typically limited to a maximum length. Typically, when the spacing between two or more search terms in a given matching document exceeds the specified maximum length, ellipses or another character are substituted in the place of the intervening words. The ellipses, however, do not indicate the number of intervening words between the search terms. Thus, the search results often include insufficient information concerning the relative position of the search terms in the matching data objects.
A need therefore exists for an improved search engine that indicates the relative position of search terms in the matching data objects. A further need exists for an improved search engine that indicates how closely search terms are positioned in the matching data objects.